Chainsaw Man, Fire Punch, Look Back, & other works by Tatsuki Fujimoto

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I figured that for the sake of simplicity (and given that it's fairly quiet), it'd be worth consolidating this all into a single thread at the moment.

Of any of the manga writers I've read in recent memory, Tatsuki Fujimoto has a very particularly acute & extremely understanding of what it's like not just to survive trauma, but also the way in which people who experience traumatic events react to them differently based upon subtle differences in what's happened to them and who from, and what their circumstances are. In all of his works, there are a load of tiny details about his characters that have a really layered nuance to them in a way that really stands out even amongst other Shonen series where that's often a very central theme to a lot of characters. I think what makes it different is that they don't show it the same way, but there are particular quirks to the psychology of the characters that shape them in ways that feel unbelievably real.

The other thing that he does is use an absolute boatload of cinematic language & references, which have ended up calling out a lot of specific works explicitly that I've ended up watching as a result. That cinematic language is one of the things that the anime adaptation of Chainsaw Man really leaned in on, which is evident in just how much they crammed into the opening, as well as how there are a decent amount of rather obscure visual references that you'd never catch without being a fairly prolific cinephile.

That focus on cinematic language aids to why I find it just incredibly rewatchable & fascinating as they really pushed the envelope in doing a lot of things the way that they're done in cinema rather than in anime in the series. On top of that, every episode has a unique ending song & animation that's directly intertwined with each episode (and MAPPA has a playlist that contains all of them and makes it easy to rewatch them). While the Reze Arc, which is being done as a movie, had an official teaser on December 17th last year – there's no release date for it yet. I'd expect that there's a decent possibility that we'll get some news in the near future as it's likely that this has some room to start up its marketing campaign, given that the film adaptation of another of Fujimoto's one-shot manga Look Back was an overwhelming success, and it's out digitally now.

Before watching Chainsaw Man, I read through both it & Fire Punch. Afterwards, I read his one shots, Yogen no Nayuta, Goodbye Eri, and Look Back (though I haven't gotten around to watching the adaptation yet), and I've yet to read Just Listen to the Song or his compiled early works that were released as Tatsuki Fujimoto Before Chainsaw Man though they're both in my library. Since I'll likely be going through those soonish, there's a decent amount of stuff I'll likely dive into, or have thoughts on, or info to share, not to mention that Chainsaw Man is still being released weekly.

While I think that series like My Hero Academia did well in making the things that its kids went through feel more permanent than is often the case in the Shonen format with Dragonball or the big three (Naruto, Bleach, & One Piece) and there was also a Game of Thrones sort of period with things like Promised Neverland, Attack on Titan, & Jujutsu Kaisen where no one being safe from death felt like it was linked into the audience experience, Fujimoto's manga don't feel like that at all whether they're in a fantastical or a mundane setting. Despite all of the cinematic influences, and moments that are clearly crafted in a way that captivate the reader, they never really feel like they're stories written FOR the audience so much as they are always just narratives for the people in the story to make sense of what's happening, if that makes sense.

For me, I think that's what makes his work feel a bit more like how BERSERK handles trauma where it's always felt that the narrative is driven by Guts' need to make sense of everything that happened within a massively epic story, especially with Fire Punch as they're both on about the same level of needing an extreme content warning. However, Chainsaw Man really steps outside of that and into something that's a lot more in the typical Shonen realm, while his other one-shots that I've read so far don't really fall into that same space, and are right next to something like Your Name. There's a way in which he peels back layers of deeply uncomfortable human experience and stares them directly in the face without looking away, and translates that into something that's not about the shock value, as that's often what trauma gets conflated with, but rather than emphasizes the framework of why it's difficult in overt and extremely subtle ways all at once that are all executed with a mastery that is just difficult to overstate.

Even while I've gone diving through a vast range of manga focused around that general subject matter over the last few years, another thing that stands out is the ways that he makes his characters, as they have recognizable little bits & pieces shared between his various series that makes it feel like it's just different framing of a lot of his own lived experience (though I'm not sure if he's every spoken on that at all). As such, his writing often feels a bit more like it's an obscured autobiographical examination of struggles with things he's experienced that are always stacked up within a very purposeful layer of fiction. Goodbye Eri feels like it probably has the most direct framing of that in addition to also having exceptionally strong echoes to a particular key relationship in Fire Punch, much in a similar way to how his one-shot Yogen no Nayuta shares a lot of its DNA with Chainsaw Man. I'm curious if anyone's read/seen any of them or wants a recommendation on where to start.

At any rate, that feels like a decent place to kick things off.



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I watched Look Back which was really well done. Especially the opening bits and the way that they delivered the vibe of the 4-panel manga strips within the story worked spectacularly well. I still prefer the manga only because there's something really specific about it being ABOUT making manga that feels... just a little different when you read it rather than watch it simply because of the nature of the medium.



I have also made my way through all the Before Chainsaw Man entries and it's really neat to see what sort of things he put together and the little author notes that came along with them. While Nayuta of the Prophecy is still easily my favourite of his early works, Mermaid Rhapsody is a VERY close second and I think that they're the best versions of short stories where it's easy to imagine a wider scope of that world, but you're ok that this is the only story you have that's set there. They have unique worlds that are self contained, and nail the balance between the humanly emotional & existential bits in juxtaposition with the elevation of lighter fantastical elements that he's worked towards since his earliest work in that, A Couple Clucking Chickens Were Still Kickin' in the Schoolyard took that sort of approach while not being as refined, and it really helps to emphasize just how much better he's gotten at the balance of storytelling that he does.

There are little pieces of things in Mermaid Rhapsody that reminded me a lot of a particular feel to the relationship in Goodbye, Eri – which is still the one-shot that sticks with me the most of all the ones he's done. I also read his most recent VERY short one-shot Just Listen to the Song, which at just 18 pages had a brevity giving it a vibe that's super different, but still carries a lot of the sort of focus on what it's like being a creator – but in more of a modern context than Goodbye, Eri. Despite that, you can't really compare them because they're extremely different in length and Goodbye, Eri (which is 200 pages long) is still my favourite execution of a one-shot.

While there're still a couple one-shots like Paper Plane & Sense of Justice that aren't published or a part of a collection in English that I haven't been able to. check out properly, I've essentially made my way through all his stuff now.



Additionally, figured I'd share my thoughts on the latest chapter of Chainsaw Man (187) by diving into the major second arc as a whole before hitting on the most recent developments, as I expect that that'll be most likely what I'm inclined to chat about:

Spoiler: manga spoilers for the second major arc & current chapter

While the start of the manga shifting focus to Asa was really neat and let us get really intimately acquainted with a different experience to what Denji went through, the shift into the Chainsaw Man Church felt a little bit rocky. Despite that, it's a really interesting way to look at how cults and other viral obsessions take over things but especially with the elements of Japanese society that have a tendency to amplify parts of that organizational structure very differently from how they'd happen in the West. I think that especially with how it created a situation for Denji where he's trapped on all sides by circumstances that don't let him do anything, it worked brilliantly as a way to help gradually move the focus back in on him still just being a kid who wants to exist & have a normal life – but no matter which way things go, his life keeps getting all fucked up by situations & circumstances beyond & outside of his direct control.

Introducing Asa Mitaka & Yoru as a complimentary foil to Denji for that ends is something that has worked really well, since they both exhibit really different ways of coping with their Devils as a representation of trauma. Asa's portrayal is something that's much more akin to what you'd see in someone with BPD where her switching back-and-forth is a lot more like an actively split personality to allow her to disassociate from her circumstances, whereas for Denji, Chainsaw Man is instead far more of the fully disconnected berserk-state defense mechanism. That means that Denji himself experiences a lot more of the traumatic back-and-forth existential struggles about his own shortcomings that Asa instead compartmentalizes between herself & Yoru. The entanglement between Denji, Asa/Yoru, & Nayuta was really spectacularly managed all amplifying to the point where things go massively south when Nayuta get killed & Denji loses it to the berserker Chainsaw Devil again.

On top of getting us a really excellent bit of wordplay in Chapter 178 where in Japanese the Statue of Liberty is called “Freedom Goddess” 自由の女神 pronounced “Jiyuu no Megami” and so having her portrayed as “Gun Goddess” 銃の女神 which is pronounced “Jyuu no Megami” the constant escalation showing the Chainsaw Devil's powers to consume & erase other Devils from reality is a MASSIVE payoff that's been teased since the start of this arc with Yoru determined to get Nuclear Weapons back, and also giving a lot of context to some of the more interestingly subtle background details about how the setting for the manga very much is implied to be in 1997 Japan, but there are a number of subtle geopolitical alterations that seem to have been a result of the conflict that happened prior to Denji & Pochita meeting up.

This whole arc with the Aging Devil and the ways that society looks at what it would do to give those in power the ability to never die has been really great, but especially being juxtaposed against Denji being forced to remember the trauma from all the people close to him like Aki, Power, Reze, & Nayuta and remembering the simple reasons that keep him going despite what seem like objectively horridly bleak circumstances that he's being forced to live through much like what we were shown at the start of the series when he was entrapped by the Yakuza & selling off his body parts, but managed to remain optimistic despite everything through what are overwhelmingly simple pleasures. (Speaking as someone who's been through having the pet who was my only company dying this year, my best friend dying 3 months ago, & 6 more of my close friends dying in the last 5 years – this portrayal genuinely matches what that experience of inescapable loss balanced against optimism is actually like, and why those memory triggers aren't something that I keep buried, but they're also not overwhelmingly painful to experience even if they do carry that inescapable sense of loss with them).

On top of the possible Ender's Game: Speaker for the Dead reference to the people evolving into trees when they no longer die, the fact that we're now getting another utterly crazy bootstrap-like out-of-the-box solution to being entrapped similar to how Denji has escaped the realm of the Eternity Devil is really fascinating in setting up for the most recent chapter. Related: The Eternity Devil entrapment is one of my favourite scenarios in the first arc given how well it portrays the different dynamics of how different types of personalities with particular social & personal pressures respond differently to inescapable stress triggering traumatic responses: Kobeni & Arai as novices rapidly have an inversion response that shuts Arai down & gets Kobeni acting irrationally, and then they shift to adhering to the emergency rule that is set that the Devils get sacrificed to save the Humans. Aki & Himeno remain calm because they have a bigger picture perspective and understand that the Eternity Devil wanting to make a contract for them to kill Denji means that there's a bigger picture play meaning that sacrificing their own Devil to escape isn't a viable solution but then they get tied up in how their personal trauma prevents them from using alternative methods of escape. Denji & Power are used to everything always being horrible & unreasonable towards them, so they're basically unaffected by the stress of the situation and can come up with an insane solution to claim victory.

This is is ultimately the main lesson that Aki & eventually Denji gets left with which is that you have to be a little crazy to win against devils, because generally speaking – all of their contracts are a form of entrapment. They force a binary solution where the only way to win is to chose something that doesn't abide by those terms, which seems (and occasionally is) impossible which is why it ends up resorting to the absurdly unexpected with Denji or taking an even higher perspective of control that Makima has always had... though it's unclear how much of that has remained ever since she was reborn as Nayuta. The fact that Goodbye, Eri covers some of the survivor trauma that Makima initially talked to Denji about in terms of how inescapable his circumstances were make me REALLY interested to see exactly where things are going in the current arc, given that we're starting to reach the top of the chain of authority now similar to how the final conflict against Makima occured in the first arc, and I'm still not entirely convinced that the Control Devil would wind up dead that easily. While we DO see Nayuta's decapitated head as the trigger that sets Denji off – they put Denji in a facility to cut him into tiny pieces and he got reassembled because that's how Devils work. The only reason Makima didn't come back as herself and came back as Nayuta is because Denji ate her entire body. As such, it feels like there's still a lingering contingency of some sort that's yet to be put into play.

On the other side of things, especially since the Aging Devil is attempting to force the Chainsaw Devil to eat it, and given that the sacrifice for it voluntarily being consumed was murdering 10,000 Japanese children in front of mirrors, it's always felt like the offer itself was a monkey's paw where the elimination of aging would be more than just stopping senescence and would potentially be able to impact the ability to mature and a number of other things which would be especially complicated given Japan's aging population as a significant national issue that would be massively exacerbated if the youngest generation got significantly cut AND made resentful towards a permanently enshrined older generation in positions of power that they'd never naturally vacate, on top of tons of people potentially being permanently trapped as both minors & guardians. The potential for that to massively amplify both conflict & murder is difficult to overstate, and there's so much potential in what exactly would happen if that were to come to pass that I'm curious if/how any of that will end up being addressed given the fact that it's VERY unlikely that it'll come to pass without some fairly significant shifts, though Fujimoto's definitely not beyond doing that still given the showcasing of the Chainsaw Devil's power seems like it's really all been about leading up to some massive shift in the status quo in some form that involves the Four Horsemen, since that's what kicked off this arc. (Whether or not that involves him puking back up Nuclear Weapons yet remains to be seen now that Asa's watched Denji puke up other Devils, and if he does, much much that'd instantaneously change things with the Soviet Union and whatnot globally would be exceptionally interesting).

What exactly will come of this all now that Denji essentially has a permanent supply of blood to feed off of within the realm of the Aging Devil, which means that Pochita operating the body of the Chainsaw Devil the same was that they did to defeat Makima feels like it's got all of the best parts of momentum that a good Fujimoto arc is known for. The other component that reflects back on Denji & Asa's different coping mechanisms is that Pochita isn't in that realm with them and is literally & metaphorically Denji's heart, while Asa & Yoru are both in that realm together, even though Asa doesn't seem to have any power there when Yoru attempts to use her arms as weapons is the other facet that I think has a part to play that'll end up being really key in helping to portray the both of them on their respective paths – especially depending on what sort of thing that Pochita's gonna make Denji puke up in the next chapter given all the foreshadowing.

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